Risk and Resolution
R. Greg Brown
Copyright 2019 R. Greg Brown
All rights reserved
First Edition
PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.
New York, NY
First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2019
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author. They do not reflect the official position of the United States Government, Department of Defense, United States Air Force, or Air University.
ISBN 978-1-64424-882-9 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-64424-883-6 (Digital)
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Students do not complete a work of this scope and magnitude alone. It requires patience, encouragement, and mentorship.
First, thanks go to Colonel Mike MC McClung for being my sounding board and partner-in-gripe over many lunches during IDE at AFIT. Many times we bemoaned the illogic of the prospect of three or more masters degrees between personal professional development and formal developmental education. Why not use IDE and SDE to build toward a PhD? we puled. Lo and behold, shortly after arriving a SAASS, a kindred spiritbut one with the ability to do something about itwas working toward the same objective.
Special thanks to Dr. Steve Chiabotti for pursuing the staff work necessary to realize this vision of a terminal degree through PME. Thanks to Air University and Air Education and Training Command for supporting the effort. Because it literally took an act of Congress, thanks to Alabamas Congressional delegation, foremost Senator Jeff Sessions, for sponsoring the legislation required to allow AU to grant a PhD.
From there, it required the opportunity. Thanks again to Dr. Chiabotti and the SAASS faculty, who accepted me into the program and shepherded me through the Developmental Education Designation Board process.
On behalf of my family, thanks to Colonel Tim Schultz for agreeing to allow us avoid the disruption of yet another PCS and stay in Las Vegas for the SDE year. Homeschool SDE was not without challenges, but the benefits for family stability cannot be overstated. Not only did my twin sons, Payton and Blake, get to finish elementary school all in one school, but Dad got to walk them to and from school every day for a year. As an added bonus, my lovely wife, Laura, got a year of unmatched time dedicated to her business. Priceless.
Finally, but really foremost, extraordinary thanks go to Dr. Jim Forsyth for his patient nudges and the occasional full-on hip check required to get me off the course I had laid in and on to one that was more reasonable, achievable, and writable. No doubt he would prefer I was at Maxwell for the year, and it likely would have made a significant difference. His advice, direction, and thoughtful feedback were essential to my success.
Chapter One
The Problem and Its Setting
Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war.
Carl von Clausewitz, on war
If thats the case, why not end it today? President George H. W. Bush asked his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell. Were starting to pick up some undesirable public and political baggage with all those scenes of carnage. You say weve accomplished the mission. Why not end it?
It was the afternoon of 27 February 1991 in the Oval Office. The president was meeting with his National Security Council Principals Committee. General Powell had just summarized the situation in Iraq based on an earlier conversation with the commander-in-chief of coalition forces, General Norman Schwarzkopf. Powell told the president he expected to come to him the next day with a recommendation to end the fighting. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Schwarzkopf had just completed the so-called Mother of All Briefings, detailing the plan for and progress of the ground war. Answering questions afterward, Schwarzkopf said, Weve accomplished our mission.
The undesirable baggage President Bush referred to was the combination of two aspects of the situation in Iraq. First, there was increasing concern over impressions the press was creating with images from the Highway of Death from Kuwait City to Basra. Secondly, earlier on the morning of 27 February, French president Franois Mitterrand had called President Bush saying it would soon be time for diplomacy.
General Powell relayed a quip from General Schwarzkopf, Do you realize if we go until tomorrow night that will be five days? The five-day war. Does that have a good ring to it? As simple as that, President Bush decided to order the cease-fire that ended the ground phase of Desert Storm.
Many fine books chronicle the lead up to and execution of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and thanks to the huge impact of television media putting the war in Americas living rooms, the basic narrative of the Gulf War remains familiar to many Americans. That narrative includes a seemingly clear case of the timely disengagement of US military forces after the achievement of their military objectives. Contrary to the similarly well-known protracted quagmires of Korea and Vietnam, in Iraq in 199091, the US military built up, fought a war, achieved its well-defined, militarily-achievable objectives, then withdrew, clearing the way for the resumption of diplomatic, economic, and informational instruments of national power. While this seems like a logical progression, such timely disengagement is a historical anomaly.
While the motives of domestic and international pressure to end the fighting are credible and consistent with the prevailing traditional realist and liberal schools of explaining foreign policy decisions, literature on Desert Storm focuses to a significant degree on the influence of the individuals making the decisions. The Powell doctrine defined President George H. W. Bushs approach to military interventions implicitly if not explicitly.
That the legacy of Vietnam weighed on President Bush is clear from his personal diary. On 26 February 1991, he expressed his conviction that were right and the others are wrong. Were doing something decent, and were doing something good; and Vietnam will soon be behind us Its surprising how much I dwell on the end of the Vietnam syndrome. So while he clearly acknowledged international pressure to end the fighting, Bush also recognized, We may get to a place where we have to choose between solidarity at the UN and ending this thing definitively. I am for the latter because our credibility is as stake. We dont want to have another draw, another Vietnam, a sloppy endingWere not going to permit a sloppy ending where this guy emerges saving face.
Clearly, leaving Saddam Hussein in power was also a source of unease for President Bush. Along with Vietnam, Bush was influenced by his own World War II experience, repeatedly expressing his concern that there would not be a definitive end in Iraq comparable to Japans surrender on the battleship Missouri: After my speech last night, Baghdad radio started broadcasting that weve been forced to capitulate. I see on the television that public opinion in Jordan and in the streets of Baghdad is that they have won. It is such a canard, so little, but its what concerns me. It hasnt been a clean endthere is no battleship Missouri surrender. This is whats missing to make this akin to WWII, to separate Kuwait from Korea and Vietnam
Others reinforced the WWII and Korea analogies, including the British foreign minister Douglas Hurd, in a meeting immediately after Bush decided on the one-hundred-hour cease-fire. Concerned over repatriating prisoners of war, Hurd insisted the allies had to consider the Cossack factor, essentially the same thinking that led to a two-year delay in peace negotiations in Korea.